round and round
by Canvas Constellations
Summary: They meet like it's a dream, like it's a drama, like it's a song. (Reincarnation!AU)


**For TLC Ship Weeks 2018**

 **Week three, pairing: CinderxKai**

 **Theme: Reunion**

* * *

 **round and round**

* * *

 _I did not fall in love with you,  
I was born on the floor.  
Everything else was just remembering._

 _—Remembering, Caitlyn Siehl_

* * *

In their first life, or perhaps their third (who's counting?), they are a fairy tale. She's an orphan with ash under her fingernails, tears and soot in her dress. He's a prince, soon to be king, with dreams of dancing and love at first sight.

They meet. Accidentally, of course. And they are separated. Twelve strikes of the clock. A shoe. A kingdom-wide search.

But not to worry, they find each other again.

They always do.

.

Their fourth life is something of a tragedy. He's the orphan this time. Lonely crusted under his eyelashes. She's an old, old god with a sword stuck in her chest—a betrayal from not so long ago that's half a blessing and half a punishment.

When the sword is removed, because it's meant to be, because it's his destiny and her fate, she crumbles into embers, leaves with the winter wind.

But ssh, they'll find each other.

.

Their seventh life is a coffee shop, a case of mistaken identity, a kiss under the stars. It is a movie, a romantic comedy.

A happy ending that isn't quite an ending just yet. Seven lives are not enough, wouldn't you agree?

So they rinse and repeat.

.

Their eighth life is something like this: he's a deadly assassin. She's his latest target. Someone very powerful wants her gone—a mere mechanic with a rundown shop and not even a website. Why? He couldn't tell you because he doesn't ask questions.

He looks at her photograph and it means nothing. He looks at her face—her familiar eyes, her regal nose and he remembers eight lives he shouldn't.

She knocks him out with a wrench and runs. But this is only the beginning of this life. They have yet to find one another.

.

Nine times is a charm. Don't let the sea witch tell you different (by his count, a charm happens nothing short of the twelfth time but he's a liar and a thief). They're soulmates this time. Though I think they've been soulmates all along.

She sees him first and everything is colours and colours. It's beautiful. If you had been there, you'd have cried.

They meet like it's a dream, like it's a drama, like it's a song. From across a crowded street. Yet, they immediately know each other, dressed in reds and greens and yellows.

They meet at the middle.

.

Twelve is perhaps a curse.

They meet on her very last day. He's the one who calls her the ambulance. He waits with her as her blood soaks into his new, pretty shirt that he had bought on sale. He asks her to keep her eyes open. He keeps talking to her, tells her about himself, his job, his ailing father, his mentor, their expectations, his cat.

He tells her his name but she never gets to tell him hers.

.

She's a storyteller in one life. I can't remember if it's their second one, or their thirteenth. He's a rain spirit, and as it is with them, they meet like its fate.

There is some debate whether she dreams him into creation in this life, or summons him out of sheer loneliness. Whatever it may be, one day, she dreams a story of a rain spirit who is a dragon and a boy and the next day there's a dragon who's also a boy sitting on her desk.

She's startled, annoyed, pleased.

He just wants to catch up with some sleep.

.

In these many little lives you might think there are ones where they don't meet. There are almosts. They _almost_ don't meet sometimes. In their sixth life, he almost doesn't catch the right bus, fourteenth life she almost wakes up too early, tenth he almost gets a dog, sixteenth she almost kisses the wrong boy.

Almost.

But not quite.

They always meet.

Always.

.

By their twentieth life, you'll realise they have no definitive pattern. Only that they meet. Sometimes they love each other. Sometimes they don't get the opportunity to, sometimes they don't allow themselves to, sometimes someone else doesn't let them.

Some lives are tragedies. Some lives are happy non-endings.

Everything is random but their strange, fated connection that remains. Every time. Every life. Every instance.

.

Some lives they are only friends. Too often he's a prince or a king and arranged marriages are inevitable. Sometimes he gets to marry her, often it's not as easy.

She on the other hand is a god most lives. He's mortal and you can imagine how well the universe allows that to go.

In life twenty-five, he's a fallen god. She's the human. It's fated as always, and as always it's complicated. They're destined to kill each other this time. He almost does.

She binds him to herself using old, cold magic.

It's all a disaster, everyone agrees. They don't often allow things to be simple.

Yet, this messy life is a love story, and one that doesn't end in a tragedy. It's one of the good ones.

.

In their thirtieth life, they are a fairy tale again. He's a prince, she's a lost princess. They meet, they fall in love, they kiss.

There's an evil queen, a witch, an unlikely ensemble of reluctant friends.

Evil is vanquished, the world is saved.

Perhaps this life is a superhero story. I can never quite remember these things right.

.

Life thirty-one through thirty-five are unremarkable. In thirty six she's a witch, he's a beast. In thirty-seven he's a demon and she's a queen looking for revenge. In thirty-eight they are best friends who have been in love forever that refuse to admit their feelings for years and years and _years._

It keeps going this way.

Sometimes they're villains. Sometimes they're heroes. Sometimes they're fated, and sometimes they just find each other anyway, against all odds.

.

Does it end, you'll wonder by their sixtieth life? Maybe. Perhaps not. It ends if they don't meet.

But I don't think they'll let that happen.

They'll find each other.

They always do.

.

In their first life, or perhaps their hundredth, they are happy. There will be no endings anytime soon.

* * *

 **I had a sudden desire to write for CinderKai though I hadn't originally planned to. This was rushed but I'm mostly happy with it. Who can spot the two kdrama plots I used for two of their lives?**


End file.
